and so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually...
town was borg, we were assimilated, instantly the tentacles of digital technology began to snake into the cortical machinery behind our fragile auras; soon we had forgotten the awareness we had achieved in the mountains...
Andy kept a spark alive; his plane ticket for home wasn't for a day; obsessed he was; in the morning, lying among cables and wires, he had the will to rise and brew coffee; we were away before noon, mounted double bareback once again on the back of the Yamaha, Prolly, off to the "Distin Bluff" for chossaneering on abhorrent marble.
never before had i visited this face with a friend during the time when the songbirds were singing, at least not with all the toys, though the place had known the whack of my Cobras well in the winter; Andy and I felt like tigers from our recent epic in the Kigs and wasted no time hopping onto a likely looking line-
oh lord, that Qaweraq marble, not so bad when frozen, but it can be FOUL when the tundra is green, oh hear me lord- a crack jam, some well-placed cam, a little duo-doit, i was starting to dance when someone shoved a half ton detached block of marble in my face-- its gang members surrounded me quickly-- next thing I knew they were all around, over me, to the side of me, as a last resort I had to start stepping on their heads just to get out of there.
yes! climbing at last, stuffing in pro, moving the rope out, finally, the real deal, and then somehow, I was standing on solid ground in the middle of the climb; i thought we had been safely on a cliff of rock, but somehow SOLID GROUND had snaked around and up from the spot where we had started and intruded into the middle of the first pitch; so i belayed in the middle of the cliff standing at the bottom- above us, the true line presented itself, out on a patch of Grapefruit limestone, but catastrophic bone-pulverizing collapse presented itself as well- so we finished on another diminutive patch of Grapefruit limestone; it was a pitch, cobbled together out of chiton dust and imagination.
for a second course, we set up a top-rope on the nicest looking bit of the cliff, anticipating hours of harmless fun, we settled in at the base; i was done after one turn- to have gone again would be like repeating North Twin once you had already climbed it; the very pores of the marble seemed to ooze menace, the shadow of the death attractor was never far, it was like trying to play Ringo with chalk marbles.
no marble tomb for Andy or me that day; purged, reamed-out, empty again, we returned via Glacier Creek Road to our electronic enclosures in the blinking port, and let the urgencies and exigencies of the things we had known for a moment to be really very small cover us over again.
to summarize: better in winter, stuck together one and all, when the whole creaking freaking tweaking edifice is not threatening to come down on top of you-- the place is really OK with a couple of good axes in your hands-
No comments:
Post a Comment